[LN] Accidentally in Love (Backdated to April Fools Day)

[revvinguptheharley]

Brooklyn New York.

Not a particularly silly place, nor a place known for love running rampant but to the locals it would seem particularly strange today in both respects.

It started with a car accident. Two people both claiming that the light had been green in their favor. They started out shouting looking ready to rip each other apart...then they were passionately making out on top of the wreckage of their cars.

Things got more interesting as people seemed to be spontaneously hooking up all over the city causing a complete slow down as business ground to a stop, traffic, even schools were shut down as no one could convince the teachers to stop making out in the broom closets and bathrooms.

It became pure chaos however as Coney Island began to tear itself apart much to the enchantment of it's onlookers. The famous Farris Wheel that had long been a piece of the skyline was overworked from how many couples were using it and it broke from it's supports rolling along the boardwalk and into the city streets.

This was no series of random happenstance. No this was the work of a mischievous spirit. One who was currently lurking behind a couple unseen as she made kissy faces behind them.

"Go on do it! Kiss! Kiss! You know you wanna!"

Harleen Quinzel had been a spirit before, and had harnessed her abilities as a spirit to do the same thing back in her own world. Finding herself apparently a ghost once more she decided to forgo an existential crisis and cause a little chaos. It had been far too long and frankly these poor saps were just the victims of what was almost two years of pent up madness.

Harley had been to other worlds, she had seen people she loved and cared about die horribly until she too had died horribly and pointlessly in a war that nobody really wanted.

She had lived other lives hadn't she? There were memories that drifted fleetingly in and out of her mind but at the moment what was strongest were feelings of regret and loss. Feelings that she was burying under shameless shipping.

"That's it! Almost there! Kiss the girl! Like the crab said go on and kiss the girl!"

Comments

[iamresponding]

He got the rest of the bandages off. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle but the stump was a mess of clots and nastiness, although it didn't seem infected. Yet. The scarves seemed a lot more sanitary than a piece of Drax's ripped clothing, at least. He tried his best to re-bandage it one handed so the woman didn't have to touch his blood. It wasn't easy. "Blue blazes, that sounds terrible. What planet? I need to figure out if it's in my jurisdiction. Hell, I might pay a visit even if it isn't." He paused. "Not that I'd be able to do anything about it if this is the afterlife. Which it sounds like it might be. Before this, I was trapped in the Cancerverse, a screwed up dimension that was ruled by Lovecraftian nightmares. With a mad god and evil versions of most of the other superheroes I know. I used a reality-altering device and my powers to get my friends back to our universe and make sure the bad guys there couldn't get their hands on the cube, but I'm pretty sure it killed me." So that was both of them dead. "But if we really are dead, why'm I still bleeding?"

[revvinguptheharley]

Harley laughed at his reaction and grinned leaning closer to him with bright twinkling eyes.

"Oh brother you don't even know the half of it. The things Panem has done in the name of keeping power over their people? Gruesome even by my standards. And those standards are pretty low." She'd have plenty of time to tell him if they really were dead.

Listening to his own story she whistled looking suitably impressed "I've tangled with people that are pretty tough but I dunno if I would call them gods. The devil kicked me outta hell once though. That was pretty funny."

Sometimes even Harley had to reflect upon her life and just ask, why.

Bouncing back to the question at hand she shrugged her shoulders "In my experience, hell is a lot more effective at torturing you. So it would be worse then missing an arm and talking to some crazy chick. So if we're not dead what else could it be?" She tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"Ooo! Maybe this is a shared dream!" She cheered and then pouted "Aw no that doesn't work. You're in pain. Dreams aren't supposed to hurt."

[iamresponding]

To hell and back, huh? He wondered if she deserved to actually be there and if it was really hell. Like the actual hell. But right now wasn't the time to ponder about that. She was the only one that could see him and he was injured. Since the war he'd become someone that was comfortable with very strange bedfellows as far as allies were concerned and whatever they were facing, they probably had a better shot of dealing with it by working together. "Something else then," he said. He gave her a little grin. "One thing all the craziness in my life has taught me is in my line of work, there's always a 'something else.' You ever see 'The Langoliers'? That TV miniseries based on the Stephen King story? People on the plane fall asleep and wind up in this frozen world, with all the other passengers gone, that's supposed to be the day left in the past. Like what's leftover after time moves on. And these creatures eat it all up. Maybe this is something weird like that. A pocket dimension. Something outside the normal universe. Stuff like that is real." There was always something stranger than than good or bad, heaven or hell. There was always an other. Something outside the realms of normal. God, bandaging this was a pain. "Think you can pin the end of this to my shoulder? I'm having trouble getting it wrapped, I just need the end to stay put and maybe you tying it off when I'm done."

[revvinguptheharley]

OK, This guy was starting to grow on her. She grinned wryly at his reference and when he asked for her help she saluted.

"Well I'm a shrink, not the right kinda doctor. But since I'm all you've got I guess I can make an exception."

Rolling up her sleeves in an elaborate and pointless fashion she took hold of the silk in her gloved fingers and tied it into a bow. The colorful scarves were now stained with blood and Harley chuckled.

"I've never tried to get blood out of silk. I'm guessing those things are done. But since I don't really know where they came from no biggie."

[iamresponding]

Before long they got it wrapped up nice and tight and tied up all tidy. It wasn't what he needed but for some reason the pain was slowly going away, like it was healing fast on its own, and it was still better than nothing. "So I'm guessing that means pulling things out of nowhere like you're a living cartoon character is a new thing for you?" That might be important if this place gave her new powers. "For me, it did the opposite and took some powers away. I'm running at a way lower capacity than usual," he said, finally sitting up, hoping to slowly get himself vertical again. "Usually, I can take out a star destroyer by sneezing in the wrong direction."

[revvinguptheharley]

She whistled sounding impressed and bounced to her feet offering him her hand so he could pull himself to his feet.

"I'm no star destroyer er...destroyer. But usually I'm a tough cookie. More then normal humans. The last place I was stuck in was so cheap though they took all my extra strength and stuff away. Seemed to think I might turn against em for some silly reason." She rolled her eyes cheekily.

"I wonder what else is back there." She mused reaching behind herself and rummaging around. There was no indication her hand should be anywhere but behind her back but there was the sound of many things being sorted through with comically exagerated crashing sounds.

"Heh heh heh, this is so cool."

[iamresponding]

He took her hand gratefully and got unsteadily to his feet. "Had a teammate that could do that hammer-space thing. He had some kinda pocket dimension he could reach into. He literally was a walking cartoon character. It was weird." Slapstick was totally one of the weirdest heroes he'd ever met. "We should get moving, maybe see if we can find someone else that can see us."

[holybartender]

"Well, then, today's your lucky day."

A man in a white suit and fedora started walking up, with a bright, wide, smug grin on his face. Flanking him were three, dead-eyed teenagers in hockey gear.

"Of course, by luck, I mean bad luck. But in the grand scheme of things all luck tends to be bad luck in the end."

[lostandforgotten]

And following the well-dressed chap and his entourage is a very large diving suit carrying an anchor. Given the weight of his steps, and the clanking of his armor, it's kind of a mystery how he kept quiet getting here, but mystery-solving time is not right now.

He takes a place behind the man in white and says nothing, but he makes a menacing, growling sound as he adjusts his grip on the anchor slung over his shoulder - it echoes, somehow, like a voice not of this world.

[revvinguptheharley]

Of course as fate would have it Harley wouldn't have long enough to contemplate how amazing it would be to be a living cartoon character. Because suddenly there's a mobster looking kid and his goon squad complete with some kind of underwater abomination that Harley felt would probably require it's own quicktime event if this were a video game.

"Well yeah, but that's the joke ain't it? What's lucky for some mook is a really bad day for someone else. Sometimes a lot of someones..." She laughed weakly.

As glad as she was to see more people who could tell they existed, she wasn't too keen on his entrance. It sang proudly of smug super villain superiority.

"Nice hat." She added conversationally.

[iamresponding]

"Are you kidding me? It's uglier than mine," joked Nova, taking his helmet out of his belt and popping it back into shape and onto his head. "If you're going to gloat, let's get it out of the way." He didn't actually care, but it would either give them the opportunity to find something important out or punch someone mid-sentence. Or, if he opted to be smart and not waste time with it, it'd clue them in that they were fighting a smart enemy. That was the beautiful thing about villainous gloating. It said so much regardless of whether the villain said a lot or very little.

[holybartender]

"Well, I certainly considered doing so, but honestly? You're not going to be around for much longer, so gloating seems kind of pointless. Boys, Nautilus? Get 'em."

The Stygian Triplets skated towards Harley, the long haired one aiming to body check while the one in the blue jersey swung his stick at her.

Meanwhile, Azrael pulled a massive gun from behind his back, and fired at Nova.

[iamresponding]

Hooray, it was a smart villain. Nova didn't have time to react to the shot, especially with how clumsy he was and how his reflexes were off and that meant he was blasted back by it, tumbling end over end through some bushes. But far from being down and out, he popped up suddenly, the energy he'd absorbed from the blast humming in a yellow halo around his body. He aimed his hand at Nautilus, firing a yellow energy blasts out at the gap in the being's armor where its eyes were visible. He was left staggering and smoking after. "Well, that hurt a little." Really, it had hurt a lot. ||Rich you're not going to be able to survive redirecting the gun's energy on a regular basis at a Denarian's level.|| He took to the air, where he was far more agile. "Harley, think you can handle the Children of the Corn there while I take on the walking tank and gun guy?"

[lostandforgotten]

The shot got an annoyed noise from the titan, and his eyes flickered out into darkness for a few moments. Once they came back, they were angrier-looking than before, and he started a slow windup with the anchor, and eventually tossed the thing in an arc toward Nova. Despite the slowness of the actual toss, the thing moved with reasonable speed once it left Nautilus' hand. The clinking of unwinding chain accompanied it as it flew.

"Leaving so soon?"

[revvinguptheharley]

Harley let out a yelp and spun around the first one only to get tripped by the stick of the second one. Falling head over heels only Harley's extremely bouncy acrobatics saved her from total humiliation as she rolled backwards once she hit the ground and sprang back to her feet.

"Oh Puh-lease. Hockey ain't even a real sport. It's basically just a bar fight with ice skates on. I could handle punks like this before I became some kind of ghost."

From behind her back she produced an oversized pistol with a cork in the barrel and took aim at the closest boy firing the cork like a rubber bullet at his head.

[holybartender]

"Oh come on," Azrael griped, "Just once, I wish you people would stand and die with some goddamn dignity."

He took aim and fired at Nova again, not particularly caring if the superhero used the blast to hit Nautilus.

Demonic minion #1 went down, but not out, just looking a little dazed from the hit. #2 and #3 charged after Harley, snarling, swinging their sticks down towards her head.

[iamresponding]

"Never done it before, not about to start now," Rich called out. "And worse people than you have tried to kill me." Nova dodged the anchor - and a blast from the smarmy guy. It was good that he didn't care if he hit Nautilus because Nova was using that. When it came to spatial reasoning and using his surroundings against an enemy, Rich was a pro, and one of his strengths was getting the enemy to accidentally hit each other with friendly fire. He grabbed onto the anchor, planning on using the momentum of the hulking being drawing it back to add some oomph to a kick, but tried to make it look as if he planned to use it to swing Nautilus into something to throw him off.

[revvinguptheharley]

The sticks came swinging down on air as Harley Cartwheeled out of the way. In a blur of Red and black she hit the ground with both hands and launched herself feet first at the two aiming to knock them into each other.

"Dignity is over rated chump! I'm more about having fun!"